(A) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for detecting the burn degree of skin, and more particularly, to a system for detecting the burn degree of skin using reflective terahertz pulses.
(B) Description of the Related Art
There are four burn degrees of skin; first to fourth, wherein the second burn degree is further subdivided into the deep second degree and the shallow second degree. A burned skin above the deep second degree cannot heal autogenously, and it can only be cured by removing the necrotic skin before performing a grafting skin surgery. To cure burned skin, it is most important to determine the trauma depth of subcutaneous tissue of a patient, which can be used as a judgment basis of whether to remove necrotic skin and grafting skin surgery. Therefore, it appears to be a significant importance to provide equipment in real time manner for a physician to judge the trauma depth of subcutaneous tissue of the patient. When measuring the trauma depth of subcutaneous tissue of a patient by current commercial detection instrument, the patient must be moved onto the support bracket of the instrument and the probe of the instrument must touch the patient. Therefore, the patient will feel uncomfortable. In addition, some pretreatment procedures for these detection instruments are multifarious and the accuracy of the detected data is comparatively low.
There are five types of methods for measuring burned depth, including: (1) biopsy; (2) blood circulation status examination; (3) supersonic inspection; (4) thermal image technology in non-time domain; and (5) thermal image technology in time domain. However, none of the above five methods can offer such advantages as non-contact, non-invasive, indicating burned depth, measuring bloodstream information, at the same time, thus cannot satisfy clinical needs. In addition, U.S. 2003/0149346A1 discloses a detection system using reflective terahertz pulse, which can detect interface of horny layer/horny layer and horny layer/dermis of skin.